


Goodness Is

by drvology



Category: Batman (Unspecified canon), Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 20:20:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drvology/pseuds/drvology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What we do, who we are, it's right. Only right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goodness Is

**Author's Note:**

> B:TAS is my favorite Batverse incarnation; it's become my default setting when imagining the characters &c. That established, I think the fic I write can be aptly labeled 'canon & time nonspecific.'  
> → Written in an hour for 60_minute_fics challenge group @ LJ || 110306 Prompt _Quoth The Raven -- Choose a scary movie quote, get inspired, write a fic. -- Abashed, the devil stood, and felt how awful goodness is._

I am what no one else can be; I uphold no law. My due process is swift and unforgiving. I am no superhero, no beat cop. Not saint, not martyr. I am more than the night. I am terror and cold justice; I am the fear in the hearts of man.

Sometimes I allow myself to go too far. Verdict and punishment rendered. There will be no bound over for trial; I well know their atrocities, what they damn well deserve.

Sometimes the sirocco of blindness--rage, pure absolution, unmitigated revenge--beyond this ragged edge calls my name. Soft, gentle, almost an appeal; I verge on joining and the line I walk is thin as a blade. Senses honed, righteousness intact, I understand the difference.

Of beating worthless scum face-to-skull so he can't beat the system one more time. Of breaking the hand, the arm, the neck of a wild-eyed pervert so his victims walk free, finally secure because at last he is gone. Of dropping a mangy fucker fourteen stories and watching the bounce--no scare-tactic tether catches him just in time--to rid the city of a mangy fucker who deserves to eat concrete.

Sometimes I am no better, merely, not on their side.

There are mornings I have returned stained, dark with their blood. Bruised knuckles, bruised wrists. Ache in my chest and a terrible lightness in my soul. There are mornings I have returned and there is nothing that remains in my wake.

It is then he turns to me, hand soft and steady on my cheek. He cleans the blood--from me, from himself--will hold our promise as long as I fight to keep mine. He is what I've made him. What he decided to be. This violent periphery we battle, we indulge, we defeat, we share.

 _What we do, who we are, it's right. Only right._

His eyes whisper _stay with me_ , mean more than his arms. He maintains me--as I him--this tenuous balance, out there in the night, as our other selves, dangerous and brittle but together we never break.

His kiss is a caress, then it deepens, and I remember him this way, taste and scent so full awakening-alive against me, at fourteen. Perfect, at sixteen. Yesterday, perfectly. As Robin, now Nightwing--always too young, too close, too knowing--always his, always mine.

His warmth in my bed and me buried deep in his warmth; nothing about us is what people would call _good_.

Nothing about us--what we do, who we are--is wrong.


End file.
